When zealots tell you religion should rule according to the founders, : Thomas's own words:

[lindysalsagal]

https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/thomas-jefferson-and-religious-freedom/

Thomas Jefferson has been closely associated with religious freedom for more than two centuries. In the first Supreme Court case addressing the religion clauses of the First Amendment, Reynolds v. United States, the Court unanimously agreed that Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom “defined” religious liberty and “the true distinction between what properly belongs to the church and what to the State.”[1] Jefferson’s commitment to religious freedom grew from several inter-related sources.

For Jefferson, an Enlightenment rationalist, reason had to govern in all areas, including religion. “For the use of … reason… every one is responsible to the God who has planted it in his breast, as a light for his guidance, and that, by which alone he will be judged,” Jefferson explained.[2] His declaration to Benjamin Rush that “I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man,” was made in the context of religious freedom: any government effort to control religious beliefs was “tyranny over the mind of man.”[3]

Politically, Jefferson believed that the new nation required complete religious freedom and separation of church and state. Many historians note that the broad diversity of ethnicities and religions in the thirteen colonies meant that religious freedom was necessary if the union was to be successful. This is true, but for Jefferson the political necessity of religious freedom went further. Before the Revolution, Virginia had an official church – the Church of England – and dissenters from that Church (primarily Presbyterians and Baptists) were discriminated against and seriously persecuted. This deeply disturbed Jefferson. Later in life, Jefferson referred to the early battles in this conflict as “the severest contests in which I have ever been engaged.” Ultimately, this political controversy resulted in the adoption of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, one of the three items that Jefferson wished to have preserved on his grave marker.[4]

Jefferson saw religious freedom as essential for a functioning republic. Without religious freedom and a strict separation of church and state, “kings, nobles, and priests” threatened to create a dangerous aristocracy. As Peter Onuf explains, “Jefferson defined the old regime as an unholy alliance of ‘kings, nobles, and priests’ that divided the people in order to rule them. Jefferson’s Bill for Religious Freedom, … [made] possible the progressive development of that ‘entire union of opinion’ that alone could guarantee the survival of republican government.”[5]

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. I wish the RW would read the founding father's words, but I'm not sure

they can understand them.

[lindysalsagal]

2. They cherry-pick the odd line that sounds right to them, just like their bible

[mopinko]

3. and the clerics of the time saw the wisdom in that.

they knew full well what happens when the church meddled in politics.